Gaddafi ordered assassination of Saudi crown prince, plotters claim

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While the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was renouncing terrorism and negotiating the lifting of sanctions last year, his intelligence chiefs ordered a covert operation to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia and destabilise the kingdom, according to two men who say they took part in the alleged conspiracy.

Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American Muslim leader now in jail in the US, and Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody, are said to have given statements to US and Saudi officials outlining the plot.

Alamoudi is said to have told FBI officials and federal prosecutors that Colonel Gaddafi approved the assassination plan. The Libyan leader's son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, said the accusation was nonsense.

US officials confirm that Alamoudi and Ismael are said to have offered detailed accounts of a Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah and they appear to be credible enough for a US investigation to have begun. The claims were one reason the US had not removed Libya from the State Department's list of nations that support terrorism, the officials said.

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Alamoudi's statements had been offered in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors. He was indicted last October on charges of violating US sanctions by travelling to Libya and receiving money from Libyan officials.

US, British and Saudi government officials have been aware of the investigation of the assassination plot for several months.

A Libyan terrorist plot, if verified, would undermine Colonel Gaddafi's public pledges that his Government has abandoned terrorism. It could also trigger a reinstatement of international sanctions on Libya that were lifted by the United Nations Security Council last September after Colonel Gaddafi's Government renounced terrorism, admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and agreed to pay $US10 million ($14million) compensation to the families.

Alamoudi told prosecutors that he met Colonel Gaddafi last June and August to discuss details of the assassination plan, according to people with official access to his statements.

In June, Alamoudi had said, Gaddafi told him: "I want the crown prince killed, either through assassination or through a coup." By August, according to the account, Colonel Gaddafi asked why he had not yet seen "heads flying" in the Saudi royal family.

FBI investigators looking for corroboration are trying to arrange meetings with two of Alamoudi's associates to whom he is said to have confided details of the plot.

Alamoudi is quoted as saying that the first person to provide Saudi, British and US authorities with an account of the plot was Ismael, 36, who was captured by Egyptian police after he fled Saudi Arabia last November in an aborted drop of $US1 million to a team of four Saudi militants who were prepared to attack Crown Prince Abdullah's motorcade with shoulder-fired missiles or grenade launchers.

Ismael had said his orders to be operational commander of the plot came from two Libyan intelligence chiefs, Abdullah Senoussi and Musa Kussa, who report directly to Colonel Gaddafi, according to the people who described the statements.

FBI and CIA officers have twice travelled to Saudi Arabia to interview Ismael. Investigators are said to believe that the account matches that of Alamoudi and that, taken together, the accounts could form the basis of a criminal indictment against Colonel Gaddafi on charges of leading a conspiracy that included a US citizen, Alamoudi.